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What is AC?

warandchaoswarandchaos Member Posts: 12 Arc User
edited May 2013 in The Militia Barracks
I feel like this game does an abysmal job of giving me any understanding of some of these stat terms.

What is it? It seems important, but I have no idea what it is. Also, what stats should I be focused on as a tank? Life steal? Def? Power?
Post edited by warandchaos on

Comments

  • gigplaygigplay Member Posts: 23 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    Armor class, which is what AC stands for, is just a stat that contributes to your damage reduction. Forget about life steal. Focus on your offensive stats first (power/crit/recovery) and then worry about defense.
  • warandchaoswarandchaos Member Posts: 12 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    Crit for a tank? Wouldn't have guessed that.

    Cheers.
  • khail33khail33 Member Posts: 16 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    Crit for a tank? Wouldn't have guessed that.

    Cheers.

    Actually Recovery is better for PVE. Crit is more of a PVP stat for the burst.
  • etherealjetherealj Member Posts: 1,091 Bounty Hunter
    edited May 2013
    Defensive stats are entirely useless. Standing in an AS when you taunt or use KV is more mitigation then any combination of feats :P
    Use the <removed exploit lead-in> to interact with the auction vendor.
  • warandchaoswarandchaos Member Posts: 12 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    I find the "PVP" to be so awful and unbalanced and such an afterthought, I just run around till we lose. And only do it for the Daily.

    Recovery it is.
  • snugglemancersnugglemancer Member Posts: 105 Bounty Hunter
    edited May 2013
    You know, if you hover over the stat in the character sheet it'll tell you what benefit you get from it.
  • trickshawtrickshaw Member Posts: 497 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    I'm going to assume that the OP is a low level new player. In which case feel free to ignore everyone in this thread with the exception of the first sentence of gigplay's post.

    Anyone who tells you to stack Recovery as a low level player is either trolling you or an idiot. Either or; no two ways about it. You have to stack such copious amounts of Recovery for it to be of any noticeable benefit that it's a largely ignored stat until late game FOR A REASON. When you receive copious amounts of it attached to stats you want anyway.

    As a leveling GWF and/or GF you have two routes to take that won't involve gouging your eyes out in boredom.

    1.) Grab gear that has Pen/Life Steal or Pen/Regen if you want to do damage and survive.

    At first I was a Life Steal advocate through and through. Then I decided to regear for regen and haven't looked back. Death simply doesn't happen lest I pull half a zone and sit still like a doofus.

    Or 2.) Grab gear that has Power/Crit or Power/Pen and rely on pots.

    Some people are lucky and never run out of pots. Some people are not. If you're on Beholder send me an ingame mail and I'll give you the 7 or 8 stacks of pots I saved up since I used maybe a dozen of them while leveling. They're just wasting space in my inventory anyway.

    Whatever route you decide to choose just make sure that you focus and don't split your stats all willy nilly. All your gear needs to be the same composition. Don't to a couple pieces power/pen and a couple pieces power/crit. You simply don't have the stats to itemize effectively until late game. Focus your stats and you'll do fine. When you get to cap then you can start playing with itemizing in order to get the DPS or TTK ratio that suits your fancy.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • warandchaoswarandchaos Member Posts: 12 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    I guess I'm low level, just hit 35 :P

    I'm on Dragon, sadly, cause I chew through pots like a HAMSTER so far.

    Thanks for taking the time to write that up for me, it seems like legit info. Regen stacking here I come!
  • mallootemalloote Member, Neverwinter Beta Users Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    L
    trickshaw wrote: »
    I'm going to assume that the OP is a low level new player. In which case feel free to ignore everyone in this thread with the exception of the first sentence of gigplay's post.

    Anyone who tells you to stack Recovery as a low level player is either trolling you or an idiot. Either or; no two ways about it. You have to stack such copious amounts of Recovery for it to be of any noticeable benefit that it's a largely ignored stat until late game FOR A REASON. When you receive copious amounts of it attached to stats you want anyway.

    As a leveling GWF and/or GF you have two routes to take that won't involve gouging your eyes out in boredom.

    1.) Grab gear that has Pen/Life Steal or Pen/Regen if you want to do damage and survive.

    At first I was a Life Steal advocate through and through. Then I decided to regear for regen and haven't looked back. Death simply doesn't happen lest I pull half a zone and sit still like a doofus.

    Or 2.) Grab gear that has Power/Crit or Power/Pen and rely on pots.

    Some people are lucky and never run out of pots. Some people are not. If you're on Beholder send me an ingame mail and I'll give you the 7 or 8 stacks of pots I saved up since I used maybe a dozen of them while leveling. They're just wasting space in my inventory anyway.

    Whatever route you decide to choose just make sure that you focus and don't split your stats all willy nilly. All your gear needs to be the same composition. Don't to a couple pieces power/pen and a couple pieces power/crit. You simply don't have the stats to itemize effectively until late game. Focus your stats and you'll do fine. When you get to cap then you can start playing with itemizing in order to get the DPS or TiTK ratio that suits your fancy.

    Thank you for a well written amd informative post, a feast for sore forum eyes!
    I was stacking leach and pen as well becuase of bad experiences with hp regen in most other games, ill stop avoiding the s
  • cableguy007cableguy007 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    trickshaw wrote: »
    I'm going to assume that the OP is a low level new player. In which case feel free to ignore everyone in this thread with the exception of the first sentence of gigplay's post.

    Anyone who tells you to stack Recovery as a low level player is either trolling you or an idiot. Either or; no two ways about it. You have to stack such copious amounts of Recovery for it to be of any noticeable benefit that it's a largely ignored stat until late game FOR A REASON. When you receive copious amounts of it attached to stats you want anyway.

    As a leveling GWF and/or GF you have two routes to take that won't involve gouging your eyes out in boredom.

    1.) Grab gear that has Pen/Life Steal or Pen/Regen if you want to do damage and survive.

    At first I was a Life Steal advocate through and through. Then I decided to regear for regen and haven't looked back. Death simply doesn't happen lest I pull half a zone and sit still like a doofus.

    Or 2.) Grab gear that has Power/Crit or Power/Pen and rely on pots.

    Some people are lucky and never run out of pots. Some people are not. If you're on Beholder send me an ingame mail and I'll give you the 7 or 8 stacks of pots I saved up since I used maybe a dozen of them while leveling. They're just wasting space in my inventory anyway.

    Whatever route you decide to choose just make sure that you focus and don't split your stats all willy nilly. All your gear needs to be the same composition. Don't to a couple pieces power/pen and a couple pieces power/crit. You simply don't have the stats to itemize effectively until late game. Focus your stats and you'll do fine. When you get to cap then you can start playing with itemizing in order to get the DPS or TTK ratio that suits your fancy.

    I really like your info but I have a question about regen vs life leach. Regen as I understand it regens more when you are lower health and less once your health is closer to topped off. How much regen do you see your guy doing on average? I went the life leach route since it made solid sense to me. The more mobs I swipe and knee cap as a guardian warrior the more health I get back. Seems to work well in almost every fight. I have a cleric healer and I often use my daily that gives back huge hp per damage dealt if I get into a tuff fight or my cleric dies. I found that potions at lvl 28 don't even heal for 1/3 of hit points and are a bit useless. I have a huge amount of them stacked for making an alt. My point is that I would like to know what you found of benefit from regen vs life on hit gear. My idea is to get to around 8% or 10% life leach. I am over 4% now with only 3 or 4 pieces of gear towards it. If I can get it up that high I might just become an unkillable wrecking ball.
  • dilaniodilanio Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 44
    edited May 2013
    I guess I'm low level, just hit 35 :P

    I'm on Dragon, sadly, cause I chew through pots like a HAMSTER so far.

    Thanks for taking the time to write that up for me, it seems like legit info. Regen stacking here I come!

    Do you have your cleric companion yet? I haven't really used a potion leveling up since I got her. I disagree with stacking regen, leveling in this game is ridiculously fast I just stacked power, crit and whatever else was on the armor I found with those stats and it wasn't uncommon to blast through a zone in short time and gain 4-5 levels just questing there.

    Also like was mentioned earlier just hover over your stats and it will tell you what you want to know. There is zero reason you should be level 35 and not know what your stats are for. You should already know what skills give the biggest boost to your action point counter, how to build your guard, and how your skills synergise already. I don't mean that to be rude, because if you don't know ask now as from 35 onward things get very difficult for a GF let alone one who doesn't understand their class.
  • jipatsujipatsu Member Posts: 94
    edited May 2013
    When leveling, just gear up for Power and Crit and keep your healing companion with you and you should be fine.
  • axer128axer128 Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    To answer in a more direct actual way:
    Each point of AC above 10 reduces the damage you take from all sources by 0.5%.

    So a 20 will drop the damage by 5%.

    And unlike other dnd games where AC only helps versus physical damage, in neverwinter it works against pretty much everything in the game - magic, trap or otherwise. The only thing I know that ignores it is Rogues daily - shocking execution.

    So yea it's very important for a tank.

    At lower levels, a lower ac piece with more defense focus may give more mitigation - check your char sheet. At high lvls, its unlikely, as youll have a lot of def either way, and defense has diminishing returns, while AC does not.

    In general at endgame id aim for:
    max AC
    5k defense
    rest in power if you take the double power feat.
    Else mixing some power/crit may be good.

    Recovery imo is far better suited to other classes. As it ups action point and cooldowns.. Guardian cooldowns arent bad, and we gain AP like crazy as unlike most classes, both taking and dealing damge generates them.

    Lifesteal/Regen are for complete **** players. Or very antisocial ones who want to solo difficult foundry quests or something at endgame. Completely unneccesary for guardians 1-60+ who play normally.

    And potions arent even needed either. I did 1-60 without purchasing a single one aside from for 5man dungeons. If you skip dungeons, you should never need to purchase one - and if you play defensively - most combat can be completed without even drinking any.
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  • jayws84jayws84 Member Posts: 42
    edited May 2013
    As a Guardian Fighter, I went through a lot of health potions up until the point where I got my cleric companion. Since then, the only times I need potions is in dungeon boss fights when things get a bit rough. Other than that, I can completely rely on her to heal me and even if she dies (she will start dying on later levels) I always have Fighter's Recovery as a back-up plan. I have never actively stacked Life Steal or Regen, and have opted them out for Power, Crit and defensive stats. The more damage I do, the less damage I will take in a fight. Learn to use your shield and to move out of special attacks. And damage is your main tanking resource, unfortunately. It builds more threat than anything else. Life Steal and Regen are wasted stats if you ask me.
  • perfectindigoperfectindigo Member, Neverwinter Beta Users Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    The advice to stack life steal / regen at low levels is almost as bad as the advice to stack recovery, as none of those do much in small quantities. Regen probably helps more, if you want to stand around forever waiting for it. Keep it simple, go for dps stats like power / crit. If you need some more defensive stats, consider max health. It's going to help out the most because you won't be able to get your defense / deflection stats up high enough to provide much mitigation anyway. Max health also makes your cleric slightly more effective, as the cleric heals a percentage of your max health.

    As others mentioned, Fighter's Recovery is a great solo skill when you get in trouble ... and it only gets stronger when you focus on dps stats.
  • cihuacoatlcihuacoatl Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 1 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    gigplay wrote: »
    Armor class, which is what AC stands for, is just a stat that contributes to your damage reduction. Forget about life steal. Focus on your offensive stats first (power/crit/recovery) and then worry about defense.

    What he means is you HAVE to run Conq build. The other 2 trees are broken.

    I have been fighting this for a long time and am slowly moving toward more and more DPS. The reason for this DPS is taunt and without DPS you cannot taunt mobs. The Protection and Tactics trees do not generate enough threat to tank the mobs. To make matters worse after you graduate to T2 dungeons DPS is required to kill the bosses. The current meta does not favor GF as anything other than DPS.

    I know as a MT this is very hard to digest. I am slowly stripping my defenses down in favor of offense. I am still at 52% Damage Resistance but I know in the end even with this I am hurting my team more than helping.
  • trickshawtrickshaw Member Posts: 497 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    I really like your info but I have a question about regen vs life leach.

    Regen heals you for a % of health drained every 2 seconds. So the lower your health the larger the heals. At lvl 30 it's not difficult to hit near 10% regen if you're gearing with split stats on all you're gear (IE pen/regen). I'll cut a clip from some videos I made last week to illustrate how it works. I'll post it tonight after I get off work.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • trickshawtrickshaw Member Posts: 497 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    The advice to stack life steal / regen at low levels is almost as bad as the advice to stack recovery...

    Good thing that's not what I told him to do.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • kirkhodgeskirkhodges Member, Neverwinter Beta Users Posts: 20 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    It's this meaningless number that's offset by infinity potions you can take.
  • cableguy007cableguy007 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    Thank you for the reply. I like the 10% regen every 2 seconds and could certainly live with that. Was just curious if I got dps high enough how much of a difference would life leach provide at 8% to 10% of all damage you do returned as health. I will have to test it once I get enough gear with the stat. Would seem better if you are surrounded by regular mobs to cleave and knee cap and such for quick health back while blowing thru them which is currently what I am doing but only at 4% LL. I guess if you have enuff hit points stacked then regen will win out at late game with that 10%regen every 2 seconds which may be what you are telling me. Early on maybe LL is good but regen wins over it in late game?
  • belladanbelladan Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 146 Bounty Hunter
    edited May 2013
    I prefer a deflection/life steal mix for soloing/leveling. Taking the Bravery skill?, You get a fairly nice damage reduction on most of the hits against you, while even 5% lifesteal can keep you running without really using pots if you bother to shift your position a little bit.
  • etherealjetherealj Member Posts: 1,091 Bounty Hunter
    edited May 2013
    belladan wrote: »
    I prefer a deflection/life steal mix for soloing/leveling. Taking the Bravery skill?, You get a fairly nice damage reduction on most of the hits against you, while even 5% lifesteal can keep you running without really using pots if you bother to shift your position a little bit.

    Respeccing is pointlessly expensive :D Better off leveling as Conq spec and building your epic dungeon set up. The only fight I could not solo while leveling was that mounted dwarf instance boss in Hotenow :D
    Use the <removed exploit lead-in> to interact with the auction vendor.
  • trickshawtrickshaw Member Posts: 497 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    Thank you for the reply. I like the 10% regen every 2 seconds and could certainly live with that. Was just curious if I got dps high enough how much of a difference would life leach provide at 8% to 10% of all damage you do returned as health. I will have to test it once I get enough gear with the stat. Would seem better if you are surrounded by regular mobs to cleave and knee cap and such for quick health back while blowing thru them which is currently what I am doing but only at 4% LL. I guess if you have enuff hit points stacked then regen will win out at late game with that 10%regen every 2 seconds which may be what you are telling me. Early on maybe LL is good but regen wins over it in late game?

    Well, it works out well enough and I never complained. Then I switched to Regen and it was just soooo much better. But I imagine once you get fully epic'd out that's when Life Steal runs away. On my TR I run life steal and it's insane but TRs do ridiculously more damage that GWFs do at lower levels.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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